Hair-raising birthday and Xmas pics!

Being that I get bored with my hair so easily, I thought I'd try something new...on LUCI'S hair! Poor kid! She was game, so I tried my hand at rag rolling. Here is the rag 'do! Still cute...



She slept the night on the rags and in the morning I removed them. Here are the curls before I combed them out.

The expression on her face says it all! Ha ha!! I never laughed so hard in my life! Needless to say, she spent the rest of the day with STRAIGHT hair!

And the rest of her day consisted of wearing her birthday hat! Happy 5th birthday to my little monkey!! Here she is serenading us on the piano.

We had a family birthday party. Here she is blowing out the candles on her cupcake cake.

Papa warned her for a week that he was going to give her some birthday spanks! From the look on her face, I don't think they hurt!!

Four little China dolls sitting in a row!

Hannah Banana enjoys a cupcake!

Two of my besties!! It's SO nice having such wonderful friends! :-) (Check out Dan in the background gobbling a cupcake! Ha ha!!)

My dad celebrated his birthday on the 12th, so it was only fitting that he wear "The Hat"!

Luci rips into the hoarde of gifts!

Luci got a Twister game from Grandma and Grandpa. Here, the kids try her out! They had a ball!

Dan decides to give it a whirl!

Time once again for our annual Xmas portraits! Here's an impromptu shot in front of the tree.

The whole family.

My brother graciously offered to take our family shots. Dean wasn't doing a very good job of smiling, so after a little scolding from me, he decided to be a smartass and really give it a good smile! What a nut!

Ok, this is MUCH better!!! Pretty nice looking family if I do say so myself! Next year, I hope to have more faces in the family Xmas pics! :-D Stay tuned for more news on that front!!

And how could we NOT take one of these shots?! Gotta remember to push my glasses up on my nose more next time!!

Today's quote:

Then you should have died! Died, rather than betray your friends, as we would have done for you! ~J.K. Rowling

Remodeling for Xmas!

As I mentioned in my last post, we've done a bit of remodeling in our livingroom! I lived with bare plaster walls for the last 2 years. For 9 years before that, I lived with old, peeling wallpaper. 2 years ago, when Dean asked me what I wanted for Xmas, I told him I wanted my livingroom redone. He agreed and so I set to work peeling off all the old wallpaper. Then life set in and Dean got busy...we all got busy. And the bare plaster stayed. But then last week, a miracle happened! Dean helped me get it in shape so my Xmas decorations wouldn't look so horrible! And it was HIS idea!!!! Below, here is part of our wall with new sheetrock and mud covering what was once a large 2' x 3' hole in the plaster exposing the lathes underneath. Sorry I didn't get a before picture, you'll just have to trust me that it was ugly!



When I pulled down the wallpaper, I found this hole in the wall. Originally, it housed a chimney pipe for a woodstove that used to be in the livingroom many moons ago. A previous owner had removed the woodstove and just covered the hole with wallpaper.

The ceiling in one half of our livingroom had been redone previously, but they had left the plaster ceiling intact in the other half. It had many cracks and was bellying down, so we couldn't save it. We ripped it all down and replaced it with new sheetrock.

If you click on the picture, you can see more detail in the wall. This is bare plaster with sheetrock mud covering cracks and nail holes.

We have an arch separating our livingroom into two areas. Above the arch, a previous owner had used a type of wallboard that looked as though it was made from cardboard. It was warped and sagging in areas, so this, too, had to be removed and replaced with new sheetrock. Here, Dean is removing the old wallboard.

It was a bit of work, but we actually managed to make our 150 year old plaster walls smooth enough to paint! I didn't think it was possible and had resigned myself to ending up with wallpaper in here. Thankfully, I won't have to deal with that and can just paint! The below shots show the new walls freshly primed. We are planning to finish the job after the holidays when we have more time and money. Eventually, the walls will not be this exact color, though I think I will stick with a neutral brown family, probably quite a bit darker than this. We also have not mudded the new sheetrock ceiling yet, but even as unfinished sheetrock it is an improvement over the cracked plaster. The floor is still an old plank subfloor that is in pretty rough shape, and eventually we will lay some new hardwood down, but in the interim it'll get painted. A previous owner had laid a piece of carpet down and then painted around the carpet...a couple different times, so it looks pretty bad, but it'll be improved after the holidays with a fresh coat of paint awaiting the hardwood flooring.

Our Xmas tree! I love this tree!

Slated for next year (I HOPE) is some vinyl siding in a cedar color. I'd also like to paint all the exterior doors bright red. But until then, we have to put up with old peeling paint on the old part of the house and Tyvek housewrap on the new addition. I'm hoping we'll have a matching porch on the right side of the house that matches the left side. When that happens, I'll run the icicle lights on both porches and around the eaves of the new addition. But this will suffice for this year. Merry Early Xmas, everyone!

Today's quote:

The best revenge is to vow to never be like the one that hurt you. (As if I could! Eeeeeeks!!)

We need a little Xmas, right this very minute!

What's that? Too early for Xmas decorations, you say?? Not in THIS house!! As soon as Halloween ends, I start feeling that familiar feeling. I get the urge to listen to Xmas songs and I can't help but to bring down the umpteen plastic totes with all things Xmas in them! As soon as I had them on the front porch and ready to be unpacked, Dean surprised me with an offer to help re-model the livingroom! For those who don't know, my livingroom has had bare plaster walls with large gaping holes exposing the ugly lathes for 2YEARS...yes, 2 YEARS!!! We've lived in this house for 11 years now and it has continually been in a state of construction since day 1, so I'm used to living in these kinds of conditions. I don't like it, but I am used to it. So when he said that, I agreed to hold off on the decorations until we could at least get it to a temporary state that was better than it was. First, we installed new sheet-rock in the gaping holes. Then we mudded any cracks and holes and actually got our 150 year old plaster walls smooth!! It now has a lovely beige primer and what a huge difference!! I'll post pics on my next post, but I'm so pleased with the outcome that I just HAD to mention it!! ANYWAY, onto the original reason for this post...
The girls love to decorate almost as much as I do, so I dug their tree out and they started hanging lights and ornaments!

I love how the lights on the tree light their beautiful faces! They look even more lovely in this light!

The finished product! Next, we'll hang lights on their "house bunk bed". When we do, I'll be sure to post pics.

Meema brought over another holiday craft for the girls. These are gingerbread houses made from craft foam.

These are definitely MUCH easier to make than real gingerbread houses! But Xmas wouldn't be complete without the real deal, so maybe I'll buy just one and decorate it myself this year! Anyway, the girls had lots of fun building these and they turned out really cute!

Today's quote: a definition

Hypocrite: [hip-uh-krit] ~noun

-A person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs. ie: a person who claims to be a Christian but who still manages to break a commandment or two, such as murder, adultery, coveting a neighbor's spouse or any other commandment.

My own random thoughts!

I'm going to digress a bit from my usual posts for this special post:

Close your eyes and imagine, if you will, that you have a friend, a very good friend. This friend has done something so horrific, so unbelievably galling and hurtful to YOU, her supposed friend, that it has forever ripped apart any hope of being friends with this person ever again. What she has done to you has hurt you immeasurably, but because you have other great friends, the loss of her friendship is really not much of a hardship to you personally. Life has essentially returned to normal, better, actually, since this person and all their mental and emotional baggage which has dragged you down for years is now no longer in your life. Unfortunately, you cannot EVER forget what she has done to you.

Would you still feel hurt by what she did to you? Wouldn’t you still be angry at such a heinous act, that a friend could betray another friend so easily and with no regard to your feelings whatsoever? A total betrayal, a complete and utter disrespect of you that you are left reeling from it…would it be so easy to just “let it go”??? Really????

The above scenario happened to me late this past summer. And now I am being accused of posting snarky comments towards this person. Well, here’s a little confession…they ARE snarky comments for the person described in the scenario above. Am I being juvenile? Perhaps a bit. But here’s my take on it. I damn well deserve to be mad! I was the unsuspecting victim of my “good” friend’s deplorable act and that gives me the right to be pissed! I neither asked for it to happen nor deserved for it to happen, yet happen it did!

Do let me make one thing clear, I HAVE moved on from this person and the horrible thing she has done to me. Life is pretty darn good at the moment and I am basking in it! But, as a TRUE friend once advised, I am holding onto just a little bit of the anger to keep me strong and on my toes. I shall never again let my guard down with people who aren’t my true friends. After all, a REAL friend would never have done what she did to me…keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I must have been her enemy and never knew it as I was completely fooled to think she was my friend!

So now she’s mad that I’m making snide comments on my blog….well, isn’t that too bad! Perhaps she should have thought of that BEFORE she did what she did to me!

Today’s quote: If there be devils, would I were a devil,
To live and burn in everlasting fire,
So I might have your company in hell,
But to torment you with my bitter tongue.
~William Shakespeare (I love his quotes!!)

This and that...

October 31st is Juliette Gordon Low's birthday. Who is Juliette Gordon Low, you may ask....why she's only the founder of Girl Scouts! She was born in 1860 and to this day Girl Scouts around the country still celebrate her big day! Our neighborhood (all the troops in our local area) celebrated by having a campfire and sing along on Friday 10/30. It was a bit chilly, but once the girls all started having a good time they warmed up quickly! (The s'mores helped, too!) Luci was definitely having some fun!



I stepped back but still couldn't get them all in!

Max's birthday was 10/29 and we all went over to Dan and Tina's for a small family birthday party for the brand new 4 year old!

Monty was being especially cute this day... He's sitting on the back of the recliner/rocker looking out the window.

We love this stupid dog!

Drew has had a renewed interest in her American Girl dolls as of late and asked me to take a picture of her with Daphne for a photo frame she has. She wanted the Chinese outfits, so I set her up with the Chinese parasol for a backdrop.

And of course whatever Drew does, Luci has to do, too! So here she is with Daisy doing some ballet.

The first video below is a pile of children on Dean. Have I mentioned before that he was my third child???

And my third child once again, being his usual silly self. Excuse the sideways view...one of these days I'll remember not to turn my camera on its side when taking video!

Today's quote:

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile! (Unless your teeth look like pinto beans, then do us all a favor and close your lips!)

Meema's Treasures

My mother has been begging me for years now to take some pictures of her and the girls and due to scheduling issues, it just never happened. But last week, we finally were able to take those shots and here are the results!

Hey Mom...let me know if you like them, otherwise we can try again!

Today's quote:

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. (Kind of ties into that whole sleeping pill thing I mentioned before!)